Headlights

Having sourced a Hijet at my local Scrap Yard I replaced the headlights on my van as they were'nt in the best of conditions. I also bought a set of new brighter bulbs and popped them in. I've now noticed that the passenger side light is far brighter than the drivers side. In fact the drivers side looks dull in comparison. Bad earth wire? any suggestions:?:

Is there a difference on main beam as well or just on dipped? What happens if you put the old bulbs back in?

I'm thinking they may just need adjusted? The drivers light seems to shine on the road whereas the passenger light doesnt.

beam spread pattern is supposed to light your side of the road/lane and the side path/verge for you to see pedestrians

In darkness, drive up to a wall or garage door - stop about 6-10 feet away. Is the reflection much different from each headlamp? Try on both dip and main beam.

PFM, did the wall test and adjusted accordingly, tried old bulbs and the drivers side was still duller. When I put on full beam it looks like the drivers side was brighter but fuller on main beam.

Before putting in the new lights however the passenger side light fitting where you insert the bulb had in fact corroded so I replaced that with another one from the scrappy and my mate re-wired it. Tried various combinations and now it seems that whenever the full beam is turned on the bulb in the passenger side goes duller.

As things stand at present (until my mate is able to have a look at it over the weekend). The drivers side is now super bright and the passenger side doesnt even come close to it!!

Sounds like the passenger side is now worse than before

dee26173 wrote:my mate re-wired it.

Not wishing to cast any aspersions, but mine are a 3-pin socket that fits on the back of the headlight bulb. Maybe he/she can sort it out at the w/e.

yeah, it was the 3 pin socket that I had to replace. Hopefully it will get fixed at the weekend

sounds to me like a typical case of bad earth check the plug hasn't gone fussy and is a tight fit you can pull them out of the plastic housing if you push them forward and fold the clip down just remember to bend it back up before you refit them if they are good check the eart end to chassis and the way they were connected to the orginal loom yo can get dry joints when soldering and if done any other way take it out and solder and heat shrink them.

Rich, these lights are beginning to frustrate me. My mate, who is a mechanic, today, after trying everything, said it would be easier to bypass them. He basically ran wires from the drivers side headlight to the passenger side. This actually worked, however none of the front indicators now work. The bulbs are fine. In addition the passenger side light does not come on, on dipped beam but as I said, they work fine on main and full beam.

Grrrrrrrrr

The Hijet has a positive earth unlike most cars etc have a negative. We had such a LOT of trouble with the first wiring loom we tried to make fit into my Tuk Tuk. Touch one thing and it cocks something else up!. we were lucky in that we were swapping it from one vehicle to another so had nothing in the way to stop us playing around with stuff!. I wouldn't like to swap a loom in the van for another but it might be a good option in the long run.

We got a wiring loom from a very nice man on here. Tony aka agpeck. Really, really helpful and very knowledgeable. Unfortunately no longer with us.... Condolences.

I have alot to be thankful to him for.......

Ok I am not mechanically minded but having observed my mate, all he's done is simply remove the old headlights which I believe when removing he noticed that the three pin sockets were corroded. I had to therefore get replacements off another car at the scrappy. He attached these to the van and tried out the lights. When changing from main to full beam, the passenger side was in fact dulling down when changing to full beam. He tried various other connectors and opted to run three wires from the drivers side to the passenger side. As I say it did actually work but now dipped doesnt work on the passenger side and neither front indicator now works.

I still think its a bad conection or a blown bulb which can also cause the same probs and Tukz how old was your donor Hijet ours is negative earth and positive earth went out in the sixties as it causes more rust than neg does hence while all cars nowadays are.

Our Donor van was a 1997. I might have got it wrong on the wording. According to Daihatsu the wiring loom has a live to everything and uses a negative supply to switch the item on. Is this not what is known as a positive earth?.

Positive Earth is when the +ve terminal of the battery is connected to the body of the vehicle. Negative Earth is when the -ve terminal is. Rich is right, +ve earth hasn't been used since the sixties.

This lead to a fraught situation once when jump-starting a mate's car. One was +ve earth, the other -ve. No problemo, just put right coloured lead onto correct terminal. That was fine, until you consider 3 points: 1) the cars both had chrome bumpers (I think, a Mini and an 1100), 2) we were on a hill and 3) one handbrake didn't work too well (on the uphill car).....!

Dee - it may have been easier to bypass the lights, but it wasn't the correct thing to do - and you now have no indicator or dim-dip. BTW the lamps have 3 levels of brightness - dim-dip (sidelights), dip beam and main beam. Main has it's own filament in the bulb, dip has another so it's possible for just one of these to blow. I agree it's probably a bad earth or corroded connection somewhere.

Tukz what a lot of people don't realise is the battery power flows from negative to positive most think its the other way and what you describe is commanly know as switched earth which is safer that switched positive (can't remember why) although you can have both on the same car/bike it depends on the application.

Oh right. i just know that when we tried to put the loom from the Hijet into Tuki and then remove all things we didn't need like heater wires etc it turned into a right nightmare!!. We got all the wiring sorted now and am very happy with it, but there is one thing that always seems strange to me and that is: with the lights switched off, if you remove one of the headlight bulbs it puts the lights on (dim, but on nevertheless). I think this is to do with Tuki having 3 headlights.

sounds like a back feed but when you remove a bulb is odd to say the least, does the battery go flat?

It was going flat before but since fixing the rad fan it seems to be holding a charge better. I have put a tester on to try and test the current drain with nothing connected and it was less than what the youtube vid said it would be.